later at the foot. The spiral closed above him and he saw that the entire staircase was carved from the rock, a sculpture rather than a construction! It gave him confidence. He continued his descent, around and around. The spiral at last straightened out, doubled back through an arched portal into a large, circular room, calf-deep in sand, rock and fallen bricks. At the centre, four sturdy pillars surrounded the open base of the central shaft. The thin, rebounded daylight was thick with chalky motes swirling slow as planets, clotting like salve on his lips, tickling his throat.
It was cool down here, gloriously quiet after the incessant building site din. Including the stairwell from which he’d just emerged, four arched doorways led off this rotunda, one for each point of the compass. Curved benches with oyster-shell hoods were recessed into limestone walls sumptuously carved with prancing gods, hissing medusas, rampant bulls, soaring birds, bursting flowers and drapes of ivy. A dark, downward-sloping corridor showed through the first doorway, humped with rubble and dust. Mohammed swallowed with distaste and premonition as he tore aside its cobweb veil. A low side-passage led off the winding corridor into a large, tall chamber, walls pocked by columns of square-mouthed openings. A catacomb. He went to the left-hand wall, lit up a dusty yellow skull, tipped the dome aside with a finger. A small, blackened coin fell from its jaw. He picked it up, examined it, set it back down. He shone his torch within. At the far end, a high heap of skulls and bones had been pushed back to make room for later occupants. He grimaced at the sight, retreated to the main corridor to continue his survey. He passed four more burial chambers before descending a flight of twelve steps, then another five before he reached the top of another flight of steps and the water table.
He returned to the rotunda. Ahmed, Husni and Fahd had come down too, were now on their hands and knees, scrabbling through the rubble. He was puzzled that they hadn’t explored further until he realised it was the only spot with natural light, and he’d taken their one torch.
‘What is this place?’ asked Ahmed. ‘What have I found?’
‘A necropolis,’ answered Mohammed flatly. ‘A city of the dead.’
Obscurely angered by their presence, he walked through a second portal into a large, tall, closed chamber lined with limestone blocks. A banqueting hall, perhaps, where mourners would have come each year to commemorate their loved ones. A short flight of steps led down through the final portal into a small forecourt. Upon a raised step, a pair of tall, blackened, studded metal doors with hexagonal handles were set into a white-marble wall. Mohammed pulled the left-hand door. It opened with a grinding screech. He squeezed through into a broad, high, empty antechamber. Plaster had fallen away in places from the walls to reveal rough limestone beneath. Two lines of Greek characters were carved into the lintel above the arched doorway in the facing wall; they meant nothing to Mohammed. He crossed a high step into a second, main chamber, of similar width and height, but twice as deep. A knee-high plinth stood in its centre, giving the strong impression that something important like a sarcophagus had once lain upon it. If so, it had long since vanished.
A dull bronze button shield was pinned to the wall beside the doorway. Ahmed tried to wrest it free.
‘Stop!’ cried Mohammed. ‘Are you mad? Will you truly risk ten years in Damanhur for an old shield and a handful of broken pots?’
‘No one knows of this but us,’ retorted Ahmed. ‘Who can tell what treasures are here? Enough for us all.’
‘This place was looted centuries ago.’
‘But not of everything,’ pointed out Fahd. ‘Tourists will pay mad prices for all kinds of ancient rubbish. My cousin has a stall near al-Gomhurriya. He knows the value of such things. If we bring him down—’
‘Listen to me,’ said Mohammed. ‘All of you listen. You’ll take nothing and you’ll tell no one.’
‘Who gave you the right to make decisions?’ demanded Fahd. ‘Ahmed found this, not you.’
‘But this project is mine, not yours. This site is mine. One word of this gets out, you’ll answer to me. Understand?’ He faced them down, one by one, until they broke and stalked away. He watched them uneasily. Trusting secrets to such men was like trusting water to a sieve; Alexandria’s slums writhed with villains who’d cut twenty throats on the mere rumour of such a prize. But he wasn’t going to back down because of that. All his life, Mohammed had striven to be good. Virtue had been a source of great pleasure to him. He’d leave a room after he’d done something particularly generous or judicious, and warmly imagine the admiring words being exchanged about him. Then Layla had fallen ill and he’d realised he didn’t give one fig what people thought of him. He cared only for making her better.
The question now was how to turn this find to that end. Looting it was impractical. For all Ahmed’s optimism, there wasn’t enough to go around; and if he tried to cut out the others, they’d sneak on him to his bosses, maybe even to the police. That would go hard with him. As site manager, he was legally bound to report this find to the Supreme Council for Antiquities. If they learned he’d kept it quiet, he’d lose his job, his licence to operate and almost certainly his liberty too. He couldn’t risk that. His salary was pitiful, but it was all that stood between Layla and the abyss.
The solution, when it finally came to him, was so simple that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it at once.
II
‘Excuse me. You please will help me with this?’
Knox looked up to see Roland Hinz holding up his huge black wetsuit. ‘Of course,’ he smiled. ‘Forgive me. I was miles away.’
He stood behind the big German to make sure he didn’t tumble as he tried to pull it on. That wouldn’t go down well. Roland was a Stuttgart banker considering investing in Hassan’s latest Sinai venture. Today’s jag was largely in his honour. He was making the most of it too, giggly with champagne, more than a little coked, getting on everyone’s nerves. He shouldn’t, in truth, be allowed anywhere near the water, but Hassan paid well to have rules stretched. And not just rules. Getting Roland into his wetsuit was like trying to stuff a duvet into its cover; he kept plopping out in unexpected places. Roland found this intensely funny. He found everything funny. He clearly believed himself the life and soul. He tripped over his own feet and laughed hysterically as he and Knox spilled inelegantly onto the deck, looking around at the other guests as though expecting rapturous applause.
Knox helped him back up with a strained smile, then kneeled down to pull on his booties for him. He had bloated, pinkish-yellow feet with dirt caked between his toes, as though he hadn’t washed between them for years. Knox distracted himself by letting his mind drift back to that afternoon when he’d shared his wild ideas about Alexander’s catafalque with Rick. The big Australian’s initial euphoria hadn’t lasted long.
‘So this procession came through Sinai, did it?’ he’d asked.
‘No,’ said Knox. ‘Not according to any of our sources.’
‘Oh bollocks, mate,’ protested Rick, sitting back in his chair, shaking his head angrily. ‘You really had me going.’
‘You want me to tell you what we know?’
‘Sure,’ he said, still annoyed. ‘Why not?’
‘OK,’ said Knox. ‘The first thing you need to understand is that our sources are very unreliable. We don’t have any eyewitness accounts of Alexander’s life or campaigns. Everything we have, we have from later historians citing earlier ones. Second-, third-,
